Enjoying my Christmas present: BitKeeper!

"Kevin P. Fleming" <[email protected]> Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:23:50 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.comp.version-control.bitkeeper.user
Organization Star Networks, LLC
Message-ID <[email protected]>
OK, so the subject is a little corny, but it's how I have felt the last 
two weeks. And no, I didn't buy BitKeeper (sorry Larry, no more $$$ for 
BitMover), but I've recently started really using it quite heavily to 
manage my contributions to an open source project. I'm using the free 
license, and all my repos are "open logged", which is fine by me.

This project (Asterisk) is not managed in BitKeeper, it's in a CVS 
repository. On top of that, I'm not a "committer", just an active 
participant. That means I develop bugfixes, features, etc. on my own, 
then produce patches and submit them to the Asterisk bug-tracking system 
for integration. Occasionally they languish there for a bit, and require 
maintenance (keeping up to date with CVS commits from others, etc.)

In the past few weeks, I have had an average of more than a dozen 
different bugfix/feature repositories in the works at any one time, in 
addition to ten more that are "local" changes and won't be submitted to 
the master tree for a variety of reasons. Most of these are independent, 
but some of them are dependent on each other. In addition, my changes 
sometimes get merged into the master tree with minor revisions, so when 
I pull an update via CVS there are conflicts.

Even though I am using BitKeeper in an entirely text-based environment 
(no GUI 3-way merge tool available, etc.), it has been a wonderful tool 
for this job. I can easily keep all these repos in sync with the master, 
and also easily merge them together to build up "build trees" for actual 
installations. While there are certainly things that I wish it did that 
it does not, as I have learned the BK "philosophy" I have really found 
it very efficient and effective at doing what's important: getting the 
work done.

So, let me just say again congratulations to BitMover and everyone who 
has worked on BK in the past few years... you have produced a phenomenal 
tool, and I cannot imagine myself ever working on a complex project 
again with anything less (which means anything else <G>).
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